The rack-size Philips Streamium SL400i streams media from a PC or over the Internet, by cable or by air: is it the holy grail of media extenders?
With its extensive experience in consumer electronics and as one of the foremost chip makers in the world, there are few companies better suited than Philips to take a crack at merging the until-recently separate worlds of PCs and home AV. The company's Streamium line represents this attempt with six surprisingly well-distinguished products currently available, and in this review we scrutinize the mid-range SL400i.
Well hello there
Measuring in at rack component size with vitals of 435 x 280 x 65 mm and a weight of 3.9 KG, Philips' Streamium SL400i is a favourably attractive unit in silver. All of its input/output ports are placed around the back, with the European edition offering one SCART connector for composite video as well as a SCART loopthrough for use with a VCR/DVD player or other device. Additionally, we find analog and digital audio out courtesy of RCA and coaxial SPDIF, respectively, as well as 10/100 Ethernet connectivity and built-in Wi-Fi 802.11b/g.
The front of the unit offers a display in conjunction with a navigational array which lets users navigate functionality quite easily without having to resort to using the on-screen TV interface, however is unusable for both displaying information or navigating at distances greater than a metre or so - a bit of a letdown. Still, it's good to know there's a manual alternative to the unwieldy 36-button remote, which isn't the only loose piece of kit in the box - an 802.11g USB dongle is also included.
That was fast
Installing the SL400i is a superbly simple affair; in fact, the manual wasn't even removed from its plastic pouch during the entire ordeal, despite the unit automagically carrying out a firmware upgrade over an automatically discovered wireless 802.11g connection and - perhaps somewhat unnecessarily - registering the user in a total of approximately 10 minutes (including time spent upgrading). User friendliness is of top importance, and the interface is superbly intuitive albeit with a few exceptions to be discussed shortly.
The SL400i operates in one of two modes: PC Link and Internet. In the former, it connects to
a Java-based server applet running on the user's PC of choice, whilst in the latter it offers a choice of audio and video streamed directly from online services, including an astounding array of internet radio channels as well as movie trailers and games from various providers including Yahoo!, Live365 and iFilm.
Whilst online streaming works well enough, the content is limited, which leaves the main draw of the SL400i to be its ability to stream audio, video and pictures from a PC either by means of an Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection. Supported formats for video include MPEG1; MPEG2; MPEG4; DivX 3.11, 4.x and 5.x; and XviD - or in other words, all popular formats under the sun. For audio, WMA is left out in the cold as only MP3, mp3PRO and WAV are supported, whereas for pictures support is adequate with JPEG, GIF and BMP on the slate.
Snappy performance
Video is the SL400i's forte, and something it does very well indeed. With the sole exception of poorly encoded varying bitrate files, it played back all of the above supported formats with ease over a 802.11bg connection with signal strength as low as 65%, offering good colour saturation and marginal quality loss. There is, however an almost unnoticeable stutter in playback at one second intervals which can easily be spotted if you're looking for it; if you don't, you're never going to notice it. The unit itself can be set to either 4:3 or 16:9 display mode, with video being adapted accordingly - handy for those planning an upgrade.
Despite the number of supported audio formats in the SL400i being limited, playback quality is excellent and users can navigate by means of title, artist, album and genre - enough to satisfy most casual users. Playlists and favourites can be managed through the Java application running on the PC, but unfortunately there is no sort of quality rating system to intelligently play back preferred audio more often. There is, however, a couple of rather less than impressive visualizations to be found.
Last, but not least, the SL400i also does a decent job of displaying pictures, but has a minor snafu in its inability to zoom pictures - an absolute necessity with the current Megapixel mania and the comparably low resolution of a composite video signal - and cumbersomely navigates images by means of a folder view with only the thumbnail for the selected picture displayed at a time. On the bright side, users can rotate pictures, compose albums and set favourites, as well as display slide shows, with pictures buffering relatively quickly.
Networking is a two-sided sword
On a more general note, the SL400i also has a few potential networking issues that prospective buyers should be aware of. First of all, the device supports WEP encryption, but if enabled, transfer rates drop to the point where 802.11g isn't particularly viable for wireless video streaming. Rather, one should rely on MAC filtering, which allows users to uniquely identify specific units and allow these to access an otherwise unprotected network, but the configuration threshold for this is uncomfortably high for a novice user.
Furthermore, the SL400i also relies on two separate ports for transmitting data, which must be manually opened should a firewall reside between the PC and the Streamium. Of course, neither of these issues can be blamed on Philips, but as consequences of the networking technology relied upon it would have been wise to include more information on these topics. On the flip side, the technology used also allows for advanced user scenarios where several servers and clients can work side by side, for instance enabling a family to run a central media server or share media from their respective PCs with others at will.
Generally, 802.11g reception proved good, however an external, directional antenna (or two) would have been highly appreciated as placing another component atop the SL400i utterly ruins reception; it's either top slot or Ethernet.
Availability
The Philips Streamium SL400i is at the time of press available in all European markets, selling for around $450 USD. A model is also available for the U.S. market, substituting SCART with S-Video connectivity. Minimum requirements include a Pentium II or higher with 64 MB of RAM and 100 MB of hard drive space, as well as either Ethernet or USB connectivity.
 |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
| |
| |
Warning: include(/usr/www/users/infotv/us/ssi/digital_home_right_promo.html) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /usr/www/users/infotv/reviews/n/5918.html on line 537
Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '/usr/www/users/infotv/us/ssi/digital_home_right_promo.html' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /usr/www/users/infotv/reviews/n/5918.html on line 537
|
|
|
|
Archive